Growth Marketing Conference Summit
Growth Marketing Conference Summit is a three-day, live, virtual conference that teaching bottom-line-driving growth strategies and tactics presented by speakers who have had extensive experience with growth and marketing at reputable companies.
I attended the third-day conference on 5th of April, focuses on discussing the brand marketing strategy, after the first two days concentrating on product growth and performance marketing. The conference was broken into several speaking sessions and a panel discussion, bringing out by the experienced industry experts.
At the beginning of the event, it was led by Tim Ash, CEO of SiteTuners, talking about "Ending The War Between Branding And Direct Response." There is a war going on in marketing departments between the guardians who insist on orthodoxy and brand purity and the maverick direct response teams that willing to try anything. In the session, Tim Ash stated: "Brand is a shortcut to your thinking!" and "A brand is also a frame," an unconscious background that frames the foreground experience. Brands provide the context which perceived the concept of the product. He mentioned both branding and direct response are right. However, they have to do the reality check by sentiment analysis and social listening to monitor the brand perceptions among their audiences. Brands have to understand the unconscious motivations of their offer meets the unconscious need and satisfy, at the same time, make sure the offer is congruent with the brand frame. "Brand is what you stand for, an attractor," said Tim.
At the second session, Brian Lischer, the Founder & CEO of Ignite Brands, shared about the way of doing a brand audit, by topic: "How to Hit a Home Run Competitive Brand Audit." In an increasingly media-centric age, perception is reality. Brian mentioned: "Brand is something you can't point to, it lives in mind. Brands are perceptions." Therefore, branding is the practice of shaping perceptions, and a regular brand audit prevents damaging and destroying. A competitive brand audit gives a clear, objective understanding of your brand’s perceived strengths and weaknesses, consistency of marketing strategy, identify differentiation with competitors, horn messaging and attract valuable customers, and increase brand equity and valuation. The best timing to conduct brand is before a rebrand, during rebrand or after a rebrand. After the rebrand, a brand audit should be carried out at least once a year. "It is too late if the brand is sinking," Brian said. He walked us through a proven 5-step brand audit process, armed with step-by-step information identifying valuable opportunities to differentiate brands boldly. I found this interesting and useful in positioning a brand into a new category by changing the perception of the audiences, especially a brand with greater momentums and long heritage would be more possibility encountering hard times on rebranding.
A panel discussion was hosted by Hailey Friedman, Co-founder of GrowthMarketingPro.com, and carried out with Valentin Radu, CEO & Founder of Omniconvert, and Jon Brody, Co-founder & CEO of Ladder, discussing the growth marketing strategies, tools, and tactics. They indicated their current company goals and delivered their perspectives that are needed to supercharge the SaaS growth.
Followed by the panel discussion, Amisha Gandhi, the Head of Influencer Marketing of SAP, presented the “SAP Secret of Running ROI-Positive B2B Influencer Marketing Campaigns.” Influencer marketing is hard, and B2B influencer marketing is even harder. Influencer marketing does not only have to deal with discovering the right B2B influencers and building relationships with them but also maintaining healthy and sustainable relationships too. Amisha shared her SAP’s secret sauce that helps to create and to keep the relationships with B2B influencers. Next, Heather Dopson, the Enterprise Social Media of GoDaddy, talked about the “Seven Steps to Creating a Community that Boosts Your Brand.” She claimed a sound strategy and steps for implementation to create a community that moves beyond collecting fans and followers on social media as well as to build meaningful relationships that lead to better business opportunities. Lastly, the conference was ended by Kimberly Barnes, the Chief Heroics Officer of ContentPark, talked through the Holy Content Strategy. The critical steps were revealed to find the content gaps needed to build better topical authority, increase the page rank and elevate the web traffic.
I found this conference insightful and informative. It is a great event that keeps me up with the latest growth hacking tactics and refreshing my perspectives in this rapidly changing market. Moreover, it allows me to expose myself to new inspirations as well as new ideas.
